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Tuesday, 13 January 2009

Meeting Review

After Meeting ReviewJanuary 12, 2009 Meeting

This meeting our SPL was gone due to a family medical emergency, so our ASPL had to step up and take charge of the meeting. For being in charge of a meeting in a serious sense for the first time by himself he did alright but I realize now that I need to work with him more in order to develop his execution, communication, and improvisation skills. Yes improvisation is a very important skill to learn when becoming a good leader because I leader must be able to react and take control of situations that come up or not going as planned. Learning how to react to these situations is one of the hardest skills to work on because the only way to really develop this skill is to put it in practice and let the leaders fail and succeed on their own. Yes in scouting we let our leaders fail because it teaches them that what will and will not work in that particular situation.

Overall his performance was adequate but he needs to work on trasnitioning activities and keeping control of the group. In order to keep control of a group of most 10 to 13 year olds, a leader must know how to work with this age group. Working with this age group requires lots of patience because this age group tends to be the group that always asks the "why" question. This "why" question should be only answered when it is convient for the leader and the group, sometimes a leader when dealing with this question has to say "because I said so" in a stern but nonthreatening tone to ensure the scout stops asking the question. Also in this age group you can yell until you are blue in the face and you will not make any progress. Instead of yelling just raise your scout sign to get their attention and use peer pressure to make the scouts stop talking. If the scouts waste your time you have the right to waste their time. The last thing is scouting is not suppose to be just a extension of school, so instead of asking perfection, ask and demand the scouts give a reasonable amount of appropriate behavior. Remember scouts are not in scouts to sit through boring classroom sessions, they are there to learn and socialize through the activities and events of the Troop.